We recently handed over a project to a translation company. They came back to us and stated that Track Changes was turned on and that they accepted the changes.

What we don't understand is that we never turned on Track Changes or use it in our daily work. Is Track Changes turned on automatically every time you open up a job? We are on Creative Cloud Teams and have the latest version installed.

We ran into issues with the file and I had to duplicate the file and turn off track changes but i first accepted the changes. It showed me no users making changes or listed anything but yet on the translator's side, text, charts, and images were missing or wrong text was inserted. We are befuddled by this!

So is track changes automatically turned on every time you open up a file? If so, is there a way to permanently shut it off?

Track Changes is not turned on automatically when you open a file. It's actually a multi-step process (shown below). You must (1) click in a story and either choose the top left icon, or choose Track Changes in Current Story. Once you have done that, to make changes in other stories you must do the same for other stories or choose Enable Tracking in All Stories from the panel menu.

(2) You need to name yourself as a User in File > User, and pick a markup color. You'll only see markup in the Story Editor: